The invention relates to apparatus for cooling and heating purified, filtered or tap water supplied by a standard residential, commercial, or industrial cold water plumbing pipe line, and yet more particularly to techniques for supplying or removing heat pumped to or from the purified, filtered, or tap water by means of a thermoelectric module.
The highest consistently pure water is delivered by the well-known reverse osmosis techniques for water purification, in which pressure applied to water on one side of a semipermeable membrane causes pure water molecules to be forced through the membrane while contaminants and pollutants remain on the other side of the semipermeable membrane and are flushed away in brine wastewater, have been used for residential and commercial water purification systems. The reverse osmosis process removes viruses, bacteria, pyrogens, various compounds, carcinogens, pesticides, insecticides, detergents, radioactive contaminants, up to 98 percent of the dissolved inorganic minerals, silt and sand, and colloidal matter from water. It sometimes is desirable that the seven to eight gallons per day of purified water produced by a under-counter typical reverse osmosis residential water purification unit be stored in an under-counter reservoir and chilled or heated, so that chilled or heated water can be drawn from the reservoir through an above-counter spigot. One apparatus for providing chilled purified water from a reverse osmosis unit includes a reservoir with a thick coating of insulation and a thermoelectric module thermally coupled to the wall of the reservoir. The thermoelectric module, when powered by a suitable power supply, pumps heat out of the reservoir, thus chilling the purified water. An electric fan blows air through a heat exchanger thermally coupled to the other side of the thermoelectric module to remove heat. This device has proven unsatisfactory because of heat buildup in the under-counter region in which the reverse osmosis unit and the reservoir normally are installed, i.e., underneath a kitchen sink. In high ambient temperature operation, the enclosed fan-cooled heat exchanger can fail to adequately refrigerate the water. The device also is noisy and does not function efficiently, although it has been sold in limited numbers.
It is believed that there would be a good market for an improved water purification and/or filtration system with an associated reservoir and heating/cooling system which is more compact than presently-known units, is noiseless, does not excessively heat the under-counter space in which the unit is installed, and which can be installed safely in an entirely closed region.